Community Based Services | Coordinating Care |Intervention Outpatient Services | Family Trauma | Intensive In-Home Family Therapy Services
The Mental Health Center of Denver's Child and Family Services is the leading area resource for comprehensive treatment for children ages 0-18 years old, including those with serious emotional disturbances (SED).
Here a full range of community-based mental health services provides effective, flexible and individualized treatment solutions that support the needs of growing children and their families.
Our highly trained and experienced staff is dedicated to providing responsive, culturally competent services in the most natural, least restrictive setting possible. We encourage full participation of family members and work to coordinate with the entire child-service system of care.
Program
HIKE is a collaboration of agencies providing services for homeless African American and Latino youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who are at the highest risk for contracting HIV and who also have mental health and/or substance abuse issues. The Mental Health Center of Denver, Urban Peak, The Council on Substance Abuse and Mental Health, and The Children's Hospital work together to reduce high-risk behaviors and improve quality of life for these homeless youth and their families.
How Hike Works
Mental Health Center of Denver provides individual and group therapy, HIV rapid testing, psychiatric services and medication evaluation, vocational counseling, case management, food and a clothing bank. Services
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Through an extensive network of interagency relationships, MHCD strives to offer a responsive, easy-to-access system of care for children and families.
MHCD collaborates with local health, and human service organizations and schools to extend our reach of services into the community by providing onsite mental health care through existing partnerships with these groups:
Clinic-based Outpatient Services – Ages 3-18
MHCD offers two Child and Family Clinics with convenient access in West Denver.

MHCD's excellent staff includes 6 child psychiatrists, 2 advanced practice nurses, 1 medical nurse and 11 clinical staff. MHCD is a forerunner in the field of child traumatic stress and provides services that combine best practices and clinical research with the experience of front-line community providers.
We are a member of a national coalition called the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), an organization dedicated to improving the quality and effectiveness and availability of therapeutic service for children, adolescents and families affected by traumatic events.
As a part of the this network, MHCD has developed and disseminated effective evidence-based treatments, collected data for systematic studies and helped educate professionals and the public about the effects of trauma on children.
This intensive program serves children, and youth with serious emotional disturbances and serious disruptive or delinquent behavior who are at risk of out-of-home placement, juvenile detention or hospitalization. It also serves children and youth who are transitioning from higher levels of care (i.e. hospitalization) back into the community.
The Intensive In-Home Family Services team utilizes cutting-edge research supported approaches to address the needs of clients and their families. Helping families develop effective coping skills to meet the challenges of raising a child with serious emotional or behavioral disturbance. This program encourages and helps the family develop a network of community support.
This intensive mode of treatment team approach is time limited and involves a treatment team approach.
Intensive Day Treatment – Grades 1 - 8
Intensive Day Treatment provides full-day educational and therapeutic services to children with severe emotional, mental or behavioral disorders that prevent them from benefiting from traditional school settings.
We use child-centered, family-focused and strengths-based models throughout all treatments modalities. Our goal is to enrich the lives and minds of all children and families we serve by helping them develop healthy relationships, empower them to make healthy life choices and to transition successfully back to a less intensive school and community setting.
We have developed the day treatment program based on the belief that helping children learn to build healthy relationships can significantly increase their overall functioning and improve their quality of life.
We can also access other services for our consumers through MHCD and the community such as In-home Services or high fidelity wraparound as needed.